Confirmed: Bell launching the HTC HD7 February 10th

It’s now confirmed. We mentioned this before but Bell will officially be releasing the Windows Phone 7 powered HTC HD7 on February 10th. The “Suggested retail price” that’s listed for all plans is only a place holder for now at $599.95.

The official description by Bell from the internal doc we received stated that “The HTC HD7 from Bell offers the largest display in the world (4.3”) on a Windows Phone 7 device – making browsing, reading email, and editing Office documents a pleasure. It is also the only Windows Phone 7 device to feature a kickstand for a hands-free viewing experience, and a bright dual-LED flash built-in – perfect for capturing images and videos in low-light condition. The large display and Xbox Live integration also make the HD7 the ultimate portable gaming device.”

Bell will also be carrying a bunch of cases that range in price from $14.95 to $39.95 for the HD7. You can check out the docs after the break and how all the Windows Phone 7 devices in Canada stack up against each other. Bell highlights that they exclusively offer “the only Windows Phone 7 device with a keyboard, and the only Windows Phone 7 device with a 4.3” display, kickstand, and dual-LED camera flash”.

(Thanks tipster!)

Colin

I wouldn’t survive long in a PR type job, how can you keep a straight face when saying “largest display in the world (4.3”) on a Windows Phone 7″? It’s like saying that my car, is the most powerful, fastest and expensive car in the world… that I own.

Don

I think the same thing, but PRs are not marketing to you and me, they’re marketing to the 80% of the consumers who don’t keep track of the competition and the mobile market.

fussymussy

the best WP7 on the market.

jellmoo

Going to have to disagree completely. For what is currently available in Canada, I’d have to say that the Samsung Focus takes that prize. If we include what isn’t currently available in Canada, then I would give the nod to the Dell Venu Pro.

Actually, this is probably one of the crappier WP7 devices available.

TheCyberKnight

@fussymussy

You clearly haven’t used an HD7.
Yes, it is a nice and well built phone. Meanwhile, it has the single WORST LCD screen I have seen lately. It simply is a disaster.
The Samsung Focus is, by far, a better phone.

P.S. (I have an HD7 for development purposes.)

Sub-Joker

I agree with the above two comments. the HD7 uses a lot of hardware (including the battery and screen) from the HD2. That’s last year technology. Plus, I doubt the battery will be good to go for a day of regular use.

Alexandre

Got damn Videotron what the **** are you doing ?

TheCyberKnight

@Alexandre

Videotron would be wise to grab the Dell Venue Pro.
And by the way, if you haven’t contacted Videotron to indicate your interest in them having a WP7 device, I invite you to do so.

Keith

Arguably the best smartphone available in Canada. Though it is probably too big for most female hands and batterly life will be an issue so you’ll want to pick up a spare.

Adios Koodoo, I’m off to Bell.

zorxd

And what exactly does it have over other smartphones?
Except the large display, it has no advantage at all.
Small battery. Previous gen SoC. Pricey, not very thin, etc.
In WP7 devices I think the Focus has a better display anyway.

TheCyberKnight

@Keith
Same comment as I did above. You clearly haven’t used an HD7.
Yes, it is a nice, well built phone but it has the single WORST LCD screen I have seen lately. It simply is a disaster. The Samsung Focus is, by far, a better phone.

P.S. (I have an HD7 for development purposes.)

nard

how can you people say this is the best smartphone available in canada? HTC is known for shitty hardware and TONS of bugs within their software. after the desire Z and legend i’ll NEVER touch another HTC device again. btw this phone is known for bugs, check out a post on the forums or do a youtube search for issues with this phone.

zorxd

Both the Desire Z and the Desire HD (which will launch about the same time) have better specs than the HD7.

astudent

@zorxd
Wait what? I am pretty sure the desire Z is already out :P. Unless you are referring to a refresh that I am not aware of.

zorxd

yes, the Desire Z is already out. The Desire HD will release at the same time as the HD7
Sorry if it wasn’t clear

nard

also, why would HTC put a kickstand on this phone? who the hell is going to use that? all they did is create a flimsy piece on their hardware that’ll eventually open by itself and cause issues. i wonder about HTC sometimes.

Disto

windows… meh

JAWG

I hope Wind releases an AWS version of the HTC HD7. Go Wind Go!!!

Alexandre

Forget it, the document say “exclusive to Bell”…

JAWG

No way…he only Newbie I can see getting any good new W7 phone is Mobi which I am on and as soon as one comes out I will try it.

roach_779

For me it was either the focus, or getting an unlock HD7 or Dell from the US….tried all them while visiting Seattle. But due to a great deal Telus retention gave me, I reluctantly went with LG Optimus 7. Now, I love this phone. The design grew on me…still hate the location of usb. When I dropped the phone on a concrete ground, it hardly left a mark. The edges were hard rubber that was nicely implemented into the body…bonus! LG also gives free apps. Not just in house apps but apps from other developer. They have about 25…the last updated added 10 apps. Highly recommended!

astudent

I have a Lg Optimus 7, and I am in your boat! Great phone! Not looking back at my decision (previous phone was a curve 8330). I also heard that kik is developing for wp7 too

TheCyberKnight

The LG Optimus 7 is, by far, the best choice after the Samsung Focus.
Even if it uses a standard LCD display, it is light year ahead of the disastrous LCD screen used on the HD7.
The Optimus 7 is well built, solid and has a very nice form factor.

TGN

@nard

Known for shitty hardware? Thats funny… Since HTC manufactures hardware for other companies such as: Sony, Samsung, LG, ZTE, Acer and Motorola to name a few. I got news for you, must of your phone’s internals are a compliation of parts from various manufactures. The screen from samsung, the processor and baseband from qualcomm etc. Its redundant to say they have shitty hardware since the hardware its outsourced to various companies.

Secondly companies have been putting out OS builds that are considered BUGGY for ages. Nowadays its the updates we all wait for, and quite frankly HTC has stepped up their game with updating their software with patches as they see fit.

You want to talk about companies releasing buggy phones?
Look at the Motorola Atrix. Motorola’s first dual core phone. They plan to release it without its 1080p encoding for video, under clock the device to save it from overheating, and completely ignore the proclaimed UTMS baseband issue.

zorxd

What the hell are you talking about?
So the best that you have found against the Atrix is that it won’t record 1080p at launch? And you call this a bug? It’s a bonus feature, not important at all because 720p is enough for the size of the lens. All phones before the Atrix have the same bug and it won’t be fixed. Is it any better?
During this time the HD7 still don’t have multitasking, copy and paste, tethering, etc. I bet these important features will be added later? Oh yes and some WP7 phones even waste data. Now you are talking about a bug.
The Atrix won’t be any underclocked. It will be 1 GHz as planned. Like all smartphones and laptops, it will underclock automatically when idle to save power, but that’s it.

TheCyberKnight

@Zorxd
Get your facts straight before writing insipid comments. There is no WP7 data waste. There is one OEM application wasting data.
Also, you should no that WP7 is a fully multi-tasking OS. The current 3rd party API does not expose it. As for Copy/Paste, it will be available in few days, less than 4 months after the initial version (not 3 years).

TheCyberKnight

- terrible typo –
should read : Also, you should know…

TheCyberKnight

- terrible typo – should read:
Also, you should “know”…

zorxd

I was just giving an example of a real bug. Not being able to record in 1080p is not a bug. Good thing if it doesn’t affect all WP7 devices.
But for the rest it is a fact that you can’t currently multitask in WP7 (that the OS can do it or not is not significant to the end user) and this is way behind the competition. And I don’t know what 3 years you are talking about but there is still no copy and paste. Again good thing if Microsoft fix this in the next days (we will see), but this will barely catch up with the competition.

Harold

I have a HTC HD7 and I have not had one problem with the phone…I LOVE IT! Personally I think it is definitely one of the better looking phones out there maybe with the exception of the Samsung Omnia and Dell. I wanted to get the Focus but I couldn’t get pass the look of the phone. Next to the LG Phones at least they offer you good apps with the phone.

Keith

@CyberNight

Users are loving the HTC-HD7 all over the world. Check out the rave reviews on T-Mobile for one, the screen is highly praised by everyone. Battery life and volume are the most frequent cons.

zorxd

“The large display and Xbox Live integration also make the HD7 the ultimate portable gaming device.”

How can you seriously say that of a device that has the worse GPU on the market?

astudent

@zorxd

I never knew GPUs made or break games. Some of the most popular handheld games require little power of the sort because they are simply **fun**. Some of the best mobile games I played are simple and extremely addicting, little use of graphics e.g tetris, flight control, swipy man (wp7) impossible quiz etc. A lot of these games I played on the iPhone 3G, they work just as fine.

If you want another example on how GPUs for games doesn’t matter for average people, look at the Wii. That thing doesn’t compare to the graphic output of xbox 360/ps3, yet it was selling so well because it had a lot of fun games that EVERYONE can play. I volunteer at the hospital and they use the Wii for rehabilitation purposes (they bought it around 2007) and senior patients have a lot of fun with it. Again, these are people who would never care about this.

So yes, GPUs do make an impact on some games but with cell phone gaming I think its a different set of needs all together, sure there will be these high end GPU driven games but a lot of the best games will be simple and fun and developed at home from people who love to program.

If you want a powerful gpu handheld system, either wait for the psp2 or just play console games at home.

TGN

@TheCyberKnight: It’s hard to argue with a person that hasn’t written an application in their live, let alone bug bash. Trying to make someone understand the limitations user-space>kernal>hw has always been a challenge

@Zorxd What the “HELL” im I talking about? well.. My reply was not an attempt to discredit the Atrix. Right now I’m sitting on a Droid, Nexus S, and awaiting an Atrix. The 1080P point is simple. Motorola’s original plan for launch was to have this implemented but APPARENTLY due to time contraints to get the phone to the market, a stable build could not be reached. One can see this as a bug because the original intent has not been reached. However, it’s like the “The glass is half empty/full arguement”

Secondly, I can’t think of a piece of hardware that doesnt utilize a form of speed-stepping. (Like a human, we don’t run everywhere if we don’t need to, thats just stupid to waste so much energy.

However “APPARENTLY” there is an issue between the tegra2 chipset and the current build of their baseband software which as been rumored to produce some overheating. Motorola addressed this issue by allowing the total clock speed to be slightly under 1ghz.

However, once updates addressing these issues pushed from the manufacturer, this is no longer a problem your beginning to deviate from the original arguement.

“HTC is known for shitty hardware and TONS of bugs within their software”
“…btw this phone is known for bugs, check out a post on the forums or do a youtube search for issues with this phone.”

I haven’t encountered a smart-phone that hasn’t had “bugs” for almost a decade.

ALL manufacturers encounter bugs as programming teams cant create a 100% stable build with a mickey-mouse’d group of hardware. Again, as time passes these issues are addressed and solved.

Jesse

$600? Damn, I’m gonna save up as of today.

Gonna sell my Desire and then get this monster. 4.3 inch screen is what I have wanted the whole time. Android (or at least my Desire) seems to still be in it’s buggy stages, hell, most of the time my SMS force quits and doesn’t operate properly! Overall, I’m really interested in the smoothness of WP7, and the HD7 seems to be the phone that suits my size and OS needs. Hopefully Telus can unlock this sucker for free too.

tye

What the hell!… the other day i typed an absolutely fantastic opinion on this form and now its gone…i feel cheated.

Archangelca

nah.. it’s windows. Won’t go for it.

HandsOn

All comments about the specs aside, I had a chance to use the HT7 this past week and was very impressed. The screen was bright and the colours were spectacular. Viewing HD youtube videos with the kick-stand was actually very convenient. ALthough WM7 is no my OS of choice, for those looking for a WM7 device I think this is a great choice. Personally, I’m going to hang on to my Galaxy S until the Atrix comes out.

Jesse

I tried the Samsung Focus today at a Rogers store….I can say I’m wowed by the AMOLED display, but I can’t speak for the rest of the phone (hardware wise)….just doesn’t seem worth it to upgrade from the Desire. I’ll take a look at the HD7 once it’s in stores and I’ll play with it, from the looks of it, I’ll be getting the HD7 over the other WP7 devices. Still, gonna play with it and see, otherwise if I’m not impressed by the HD7, I may get a Focus off of eBay and not for the outrageous amount that Rogers is asking for outright.

oats

Why does Canada ALWAYS, I mean ALWAYS accept USA hand-me-downs ????

I think it’s time we do something about it. Bring the MOTO XOOM right away, not next year and say then, “THE best tablet in the world!”

They think we’re silly?

bearcove

Actually, the PR on that is fairly smart. They obviously want to appeal to Windows users, so why compare it to a phone using another operating system. They could say it’s the largest screen they carry. But why should they tell customers the Dell Streak has a 5″ screen. That would be pretty stupid now wouldn’t it.